Composing

Edition

All the copies of a work printed at any time from substantially
the same setting of type.

Folio

Book size when the printed sheets are folded once, giving a two-leaf
quire and pages half the size of the sheet.

Forme

Type assembled into pages and locked into a frame ready for printing.

Foul papers

Dramatist's rough draft manuscript of a play, with his corrections,
additions, and deletions.

Holograph

Work written wholly in the author's own hand.

Imprint

Name of the printer, publisher, bookseller, usually with the place
and date of publication, printed on the title-page.

Issue

All the copies of an edition sold at any one time. Each issue will
normally have its own title-page. Successive issues of the same
edition may have other minor textual differences.

Memorial Reconstruction

Text of a play reconstructed from memory, usually by actors involved
in performances. Also called a reported text.

Octavo

Book size when the printed sheets are folded three times, giving
an eight-leaf quire and pages one-eighth the size of the sheet.

Promptbook

Manuscript of a play containing the licence issued by the Master
of the Revels allowing it to be performed. This copy was not used
for prompting in the modern sense, and is often referred to as the
playbook.

Quarto

Book size when the printed sheets are folded twice, giving a four-leaf
quire and pages one-quarter the size of the sheet.

Quire

Section of a book resulting from the folding of a sheet after printing.
A Folio may have two
leaves in a quire, a Quarto
four leaves, and an Octavo
eight leaves.

Register

List of Signatures for
the Quires in a printed
book, with the number of leaves in each quire.

Setting

Sometime used as a synonym for Composing,
but more usually to describe the resulting printed text.

Signature

Letter or number assigned to each Quire
in a printed book, to aid the printing of the book and the assembly
of its sheets in the correct order.

Variant

Copy of an Edition
with minor variations resulting from changes made during printing.
Sometimes called a state.